Daily and Weekly newsletters available.

What's On Your Plate?

Being a foodie in Britain is a glorious experience—there is a national obsession with food and eating—what to buy, where to buy it, how to cook it and where to eat it. For your delectation, the Food Monthly (one of many regular food-related newspaper supplements) has whipped up two different meals: the most ethical and the most unethical on earth. Start off dinner with a conscience quaffing Nyetimber wine (no air miles and locally grown vines). The Yeo Valley organic yoghurt comes in easily recycled pots, the farm uses wind and solar power and carries out extensive reforestation. The Dickinson & Morris pork pies (this is Britain, don’t forget) are made of uncured pork with no hydrogenated fats. The Fishermen’s Association has inserted tags in the gills of the line-caught Cornish sea bass to ensure that it has been fished using sustainable methods. For dessert: Fair Trade bananas from the Windward Isles. Of course all the fruit and vegetables come delivered in an organic vegetable box. The unethical meal contains many of the usual suspects familiar to North Americans. Dole pineapple, margarine using palm oil (causing the destruction of the rain forest and organg-utans) and Nestle products are included. So are South African apples (terrible working conditions for the workers), farmed tiger prawns (so-called organic farming pollutes the soil and destroys mangrove forests), broiler chickens ( nasty farming methods) and bottled water shipped from Fiji. Whew! What are you serving for dinner tonight? :: The Observer Food Monthly